Jordan Shellow
The purpose of my research is to investigate if chronic stress impacts the aging brain, focusing on the neocortex. Allostatic load, the sum of all chronic stress, is known to cause harmful impacts on health, and this study seeks to examine how certain degenerative pathways in the neocortex are affected by stress. Further, the neocortex is necessary for many cognitive processes such as memory, perception, thought and attention, making it of particular interest for cognitive aging research. If this project finds a relation between high allostatic load and degradation of […]
Shahar Schwartz
Crops face a wide variety of novel challenges in the field, especially from global warming and the emergence of new plant pathogens. Gene editing technologies (like CRISPR) are a powerful tool to combat these challenges, but we’ve only scratched the surface of how they can be used in plants. During the summer, I’ll be researching several different methods of inducing gene editing in plants. The project I’m most directly involved with uses an enzyme called ProCas9, which is a synthetically modified version of the enzyme Cas9 that could potentially be […]
Rohan Rattan
Plant development is regulated by hormones. A particularly important hormone controlling cell growth, division and differentiation in plants is cytokinin. Exposure to cytokinin is known to trigger the increase in the expression of hundreds of genes that reprogram the cell. However, these genes do not respond simultaneously. The cell carefully regulates the speed with which genes turn on after a stimulus. How do plants control the order and speed at which different cytokinin-responsive genes turn on in response to the hormone? To answer this, I plan to explore the temporal […]
Sarah Peykar
Metabolic inflexibility shows relation to the prevalence of diabetes, specifically as a precursor of type 2 diabetes, and obesity. My research project will focus on determining metabolic flexibility in athletically trained vs. untrained, young and old participants through measuring the relationship between exercise status, age, sex, and the ability to oxidize carbohydrates and fatty acids. Those with type 2 diabetes are metabolically inflexible, and thus lack the mitochondria necessary to oxidize glucose and fat. Mitochondrial function is imperative for energy metabolism to produce cellular adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in skeletal muscles, […]
Carolyn Nguyen
Cancer immunotherapy is a therapeutic treatment that supplements the body’s immune system and is a proven approach to treat patients with advanced cancers. Through this treatment, key mediators called T cells suppress tumor function by specifically recognizing tumor-expressing antigens and attacking tumor cells. However, with time, T cells eventually enter a dysfunctional or exhausted state due to prolonged antigen stimulation, leading to a loss of effector functions and a transcriptional state distinct from that of healthy T cells. T cell exhaustion can result in sustained expression of inhibitory receptors and […]
Armaan Nangia
Regenerative surgery is an area of growing importance in medicine. A new field of regenerative surgery is combining a tissue ablation modality that leaves the extracellular matrix intact with transplantation of regenerative cells into the ablated volume. An effective method for generating a niche for cell transplantation is electroporation, which creates nanosized pores in the cellular membrane, which can be utilized in different ways. Based on our current knowledge, there is much to be explored in regard to electroporation and determining the most effective parameters for successful tissue regeneration. We […]
Pranit Mohnot
Hybrid Differential Dynamic Programming (DDP) is a control method for legged robots that is optimized for efficient motion. However, it is sensitive to modeling errors (the difference between how we expect the robot to behave and how it actually behaves) and unexpected disturbances (such as a sudden wind gust or a slippery floor). There exist DDP algorithms that are robust to some disturbances, but not those that occur when the robot’s foot makes contact with the ground (known as impact). Uncertain impact dynamics are currently a major source of disturbances […]
Germaine Mendez
Despite the apparent limitations in the regenerative capacity observed in higher vertebrates, regeneration was observed to be induced in non-regenerative animals, indicating that the potential for regeneration is in fact present. A recent regenerative study demonstrated that administration of amino acids (L-leucine and L-Glutamine) and insulin/sugar, induced a regenerative response in Drosophila and mice, species known to have limited regenerative potential. The results of this study demonstrate a remarkable conserved effect of nutrient supplementation on the activation of regeneration between species with a high degree of evolutionary divergence. This suggests […]
Yoomee Zeng
After stars die, they live long lives as stellar remnants: black holes, neutron stars, and white dwarfs. Our knowledge of these “compact objects” is limited, especially for those in binary systems with other stars. Diving into the studies of distant stars in the cosmos is essential to helping us understand how stars live and die in our own galaxy and catching a glimpse of the future our home is headed. My research aims to specifically focus on the characterization of an unusual ellipsoidal variable (ELL) binary star system: ASASSN-V J175037.30-213015.4 […]
Mingyu Yu
Shock waves occur when there is a sudden change in the flow velocity, pressure, or density in a compressible medium (such as a gas). Mathematically, shock waves are types of singularity formed in the solutions to nonlinear PDEs, where the spatial gradient of the solution becomes infinite in finite time. Although significant progress has been made in developing numerical schemes for capturing shock waves in conservation laws, recent mathematical advances can help formulate novel numerical schemes. This project aims to create a robust numerical scheme to understand the formation of […]